Is Abolishing ICE the New Liberal Litmus Test?

Before last week, these were the mindless slogans of an infantile Left, seen on signs at rallies to abolish ICE, the agency that arrests and deports criminal aliens who have no right to be in our country.

By last week, however, “Abolish ICE!” was no longer the exclusive slogan of the unhinged Left. National Democrats were signing on.

Before his defeat in New York’s 14th Congressional District, Joe Crowley, fourth-ranked Democrat in the House, called ICE a “fascist” organization.

After Crowley’s rout by a 28-year-old socialist who called for killing the agency, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York declared ICE to be “a cruel deportation force (that) we need to abolish.”

Cynthia Nixon, a candidate for governor of New York, described ICE as a “terrorist organization…terrorizing people who are coming to this country…. We need to abolish ICE.”

A star of “Sex and the City” castigated the men and women of ICE as terrorists at St. Paul and St. Andrew United Methodist Church in Manhattan. One wonders what the pastor thought of this Christian message.

Friday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio joined the clamor: “We should abolish ICE.” Over the weekend, Senator Elizabeth Warren signed on: “President Trump seems to think that the only way to have immigration rule is to rip parents from their family (and) treat rape victims and refugees like terrorists and to put children in cages.”

What ICE does is “ugly” and “wrong,” said Warren.

“We need to rebuild our immigration system from top to bottom starting by replacing ICE with something that reflects our morality.”

President Donald Trump describes this latest liberal campaign as social and political insanity: “You get rid of ICE, you’re going to have a country that you’re going to be afraid to walk out of your house.”

What is going on here?

Democrats, having just gone through the worst week in memory for progressives, are in imminent danger of losing it altogether.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that not only is the Trump travel ban constitutional, government unions have no right to extract “agency fees” from workers who do not wish to support the union.

Such fees violate the First Amendment rights of government workers not to promote policies or ideas in which they disbelieve.

Then came word that Justice Anthony Kennedy, the “swing vote” on the Supreme Court who was crucial to decisions that established abortion, homosexuality and same-sex marriage as constitutional rights, will be stepping down.

And Trump informed the press that he would announce Kennedy’s successor on July 9, to be drawn from a list of 20 jurists and legal scholars, all of whom have been vetted by the Federalist Society.

Panic ensued.

“I’m scared. You’re scared. We’re all scared,” says Warren in a video her campaign has released.

On Bill Maher’s show, leftist film director Michael Moore called for a million citizens to surround the Capitol to prevent a vote on Kennedy’s successor. How Moore’s million-man march proposes to get into Mitch McConnell’s Senate chamber was left unexplained.

At a fundraiser in Berkeley, California, Barack Obama tried to calm his terrified minions: “All these people that are out here kvetching and wringing their hands and stressed and anxious and constantly watching cable TV and howling at the moon, ‘What are we going to do?’ Their hair is falling out.”

But liberal elites making fools of themselves is a less serious matter than the savage slanders Democrats are hurling at the 20,000 men and women of ICE who are daily protecting us and our country.

ICE, after all, was established to prevent another 9/11, when real terrorists, some of whom had overstayed their visas, massacred 3,000 innocent people, most of them Americans.

This vilification of ICE, writes Deputy Director Thomas D. Homan, represents both an injustice and an act of ingratitude:

“Since September 2016, ICE has arrested nearly 5,000 criminal aliens in New York—individuals with a criminal conviction in addition to their violation of immigration laws. Many of these arrests were conducted at large in the community which ICE is increasingly forced to do due to sanctuary policies in the state that prevent us from taking custody of criminal aliens in the secure confines of a jail.

“Governor [Andrew Cuomo] supports these policies at the expense of the safety of the very same communities he took an oath to protect.”

Whatever one may think of Trump’s policy of “zero tolerance” of immigrants who break into our country, for elites to smear the 20,000 men and women who risk their lives to keep us safe as “terrorists” and “fascists” is an especially egregious form of liberal ingratitude.

What is it in the DNA of the Left that it is always ready to enlist in any new war on cops?

The issue of 2018: should we, or should we not, abolish ICE and embrace the progressive alternative of open borders?

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the recent book, Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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21 Responses to Is Abolishing ICE the New Liberal Litmus Test?

Mr. Buchanan lately seems quite concerned about the soul of liberalism in America.

First asking whether pointing out Trumps authoritarian tendencies is a losing strategy … then about the party continuing to elect candidates who reflect America’s ethnic and gender diversity … now about whether calls to rein in or abolish what seems like to many an out of control Federal Agency is a “new war on cops?” (without a moment to reflect on the irony of that statement when the President regularly impugns the character of the FBI).

Well, I guess evaluating the soul of the Dems is a much less painful exercise for a lifelong conservative than evaluating what passes for a soul of the Republican Party in the era of Trump.

Open borders is not a winnable issue with the most of the public. Polls do not support it.

A lot of this is just anti-Trump hysterics. If Trump was for open borders and a lifetime of foodstamps and government checks for anyone that crossed the border, these radical progressives would be against it.

RE: What is it in the DNA of the Left that it is always ready to enlist in any new war on cops?

The left has been chanting the same mantra for 147 years;

Stand up all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might
Don’t cling so hard to your possessions
For you have nothing if you have no rights
Let racist ignorance be ended
For respect makes the empires fall
Freedom is merely privilege extended
Unless enjoyed by one and all
So come brothers and sisters
For the struggle carries on
The internationale
Unites the world in song
So comrades come rally
For this is the time and place
The international ideal
Unites the human race
Let no one build walls to divide us
Walls of hatred nor walls of stone
Come greet the dawn and stand beside us
We’ll live together or we’ll die alone
In our world poisoned by exploitation
Those who have taken now they must give
And end the vanity of nations
We’ve but one earth on which to live
And so begins the final drama
In the streets and in the fields
We stand unbowed before their armor
We defy their guns and shields
When we fight provoked by their aggression
Let us be inspired by like and love
For though they offer us concessions
Change will not come from above

The platforms they stand on now differ very little in substance or style from the soapboxes of the 1890’s.

Not only should we not abolish ICE, we should start enforcing other laws, like the right of free assembly. When will we see the police enforce people’s right to peacefully assemble and voice their opinions? The Left feels entitled to break any law they disagree with and to verbally intimidate or beat up their political opponents. If the police are not told to do their jobs, we will see vigilantism. Better to see ranks of police finally wading into the fray, nightsticks swinging… before it’s too late.

I hope not but I think a lot of people on the Left want open borders which shows you how muddled the thinking is on the Left these days. They claim to support the poor and the working-class and then want to floor the country with cheap, mostly low-skilled labor that will lower wages.

At least Bernie Sanders argued against open borders and correctly called it a Koch Brothers policy. That is more than I can say for these wackos who are obviously pandering to ethnic tribalism.

Egypt Steve said it right. The loony right calls for abolition of the IRS and the loony left calls for the elimination of ICE. There are legitimate and necessary reasons for the existence of both. But all it takes is a chief executive without integrity or respect for the rule of law to stain the reputation of either agency.

(The article is from an Italian newspaper, but you don’t need to know the language, the picture is enough for getting the hang of it.)

You may keep on denying the reality, but this is how illegal immigrants are and will be treated universally by BOTH right- and left-wing governments from now on. Progressives like to say that America’s coastal cities are “the continuation of Europe”. So there it is, an explicit and picturesque image of the European left’s evolution. Or, rather, of returning to its default settings. And, as Sen. Sanders’s stance on open borders (already mentioned here) shows, the “continuation” has already started following the engine. Like it or not, but already in the near future you will be stuck either with a nationalist right (which is tough on immigration) or with a classical socialist/labourite left (which is even tougher on it). That’s the (U-)turn history has already made. To be honest, it was inevitable, but it might not have happened as soon as it did. But the liberal/neocon elites were too arrogant, self-righteous and narrow-minded to postpone it. Serves them right. Them – and those who put their trust in them.

War on cops?

Newsflash. The FBI are cops. So why so many Republicans are vilifying them? Why are they heaping insults on a former head of the FBI (Robert Mueller) and accusing him of nefarious deeds?

Do you even see the difference between thousands of rank and files and one highly politicized figure?

I am curious, how many more Conservatives like you take moral guidance from the French? I certainly don’t

And if the security of this country demands that a toddler be locked up, cold and hungry, sleeping on the bare floor, then maybe this country does not deserver security.

There are better ways of securing our borders than that.

At least do me a favor, and do not talk about defending the family, or children. Or pretend that you are a Christian because when you approve of what is going on with children at the border, you are NOT following the Golden Rule.

What a joke the Dems and the Repubs are.
You see, when you have some people sayin’:
abolish ICE and you have some sayin’: but by golly we gotta protect our borders…
well, here is what I say, and of course, I’m right as I have been about American politics/the rigged money/lobby system and America’s continuing moral failures in foreign policy since I was a young fella-
This debate about this police/fascist state type agency ICE is what happens when reality mixed with humanity hits some of us.
To whit, consider: no matter what, it is absolutely, definitely wrong and against any practical conscience driven minds and hearts, not to mention against the one Lord all three major religions believe in to separate children from their families. It’s just awful!
So, are you people nuts? To allow this!
And don’t go into a discussion about this or that religion. This isn’t about yours his or hers or my religion, you know,like who’s better.
The really creepy people that are in the
Congress/Houses in D.C. are heartless and
kinda make me sick.
So, how about disbanding this thing that is now our owner/master and is working against our rights, all of them, that would be the-
Homeland Security giant that is killing the Bill of Rights and our privacy and security.
How can we allow this police/fascist/Stalin type system to be? How…
Oh, ah, yeah, that’s easy-look at the…yup the houses of Congress again.
Got any Alka Seltzer anyone..?
Thank you and Have A Good Day

I am curious, how many more Conservatives like you take moral guidance from the French? I certainly don’t

Looks like the word “French” eclipsed my entire comment to you. “French” was not the most important adjective there. The most important one was “left-wing”. Macron is a LEFT-WING president who cracks down on immigration in full force. Kind of hard proclaiming this young feller a Vichyste or whatever childish name-calling the French PC crowd currently prefers.

But if you think that the situation I described is something exclusively French, you cannot be more wrong. Italy. The new government (again, a broad left-right coalition, with the left-wing Movimento Cinque Stelle having more parliamentary seats) closed the country’s ports to immigrant vessels entirely, no matter how dire their situation would be. During Italy’s previous liberal PM, Austria and Slovenia (rigt- and left-wing governments respectively) closed their borders with Italy to prevent the entrance of immigrants going up north (the Schengen be damned). Eastern Europe (whether EU members (like Hungary or Poland) or not (like Russia) didn’t let illegal immigrants at all from the very beginning of this recent crisis. Britain opted out of the European Union with its migrant influx altogether. The way Denmark deals with ethnic ghettoes was recently described in Rod Dreher’s article here. Angela Merkel, fearing the collapse of her fragile coalition, has just complied with MoI Horst Seehofer’s ultimatum to build detention centers for immigrants already compared to concentration camps by German SJWs.

And these were only those countries whose current situation I can readily remember and describe. So no, it is not something specifically French. It is all over Europe already.

And if the security of this country demands that a toddler be locked up, cold and hungry, sleeping on the bare floor, then maybe this country does not deserver security.

There are better ways of securing our borders than that.

At least do me a favor, and do not talk about defending the family, or children. Or pretend that you are a Christian because when you approve of what is going on with children at the border, you are NOT following the Golden Rule.

Funny. For years and decades you, progressives, were deriding conservatives for their “outdated moralism”. Now we complied with your desires, having discarded the damn thing and become purely calculating and Machiavellian. But you still don’t like it. Why?

Though I can guess the answer, actually. Cave desideriorum tuorum, isn’t that right?

So assume your new identity. Do not berate other for not living to standards you do not adhere yourself. Do not pretend to virtues you do not have. You are no better than those you excoriate, so stop preaching and complaining.

As Bernard Shaw explained “I have come to the conclusion that Christianty is bunk. So let me go adore Mars, my God” which is what an honest man says.

And the hypocrisy of the EU is hardly news. If you want to adopt their standards, fine, but do not identify yourself as something you are not.

So assume your new identity. Do not berate other for not living to standards you do not adhere yourself. Do not pretend to virtues you do not have. You are no better than those you excoriate, so stop preaching and complaining.

As Bernard Shaw explained “I have come to the conclusion that Christianty is bunk. So let me go adore Mars, my God” which is what an honest man says.

So you agree that you faced your desires having come true and now are scared of what you see because people who think that the end justifies the means (much like your leaders do) are much harder to fight, especially when they still use (and will long be able to use) that veneer of morality you were so passionately deriding. El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. That’s the one you’ve got. And you’ve got no means to struggle against it, since it’s a doppelganger of your own hypocrisy that turned on you.

And the hypocrisy of the EU is hardly news. If you want to adopt their standards, fine, but do not identify yourself as something you are not.

We want to adopt their standards? Charming. Charming indeed. For years we, bigots, were told by progressives that the EU was a paragon of human rights, an example of virtues, an earthly paradise of liberty equality and fraternity. At last we said: “All right then. You’ve convinced us. We’ll adopt their standards – those they actually follow themselves”. And you still don’t like it(TM). Why(TM)?

Discúlpame mi ociosa curiosidad, but what has become your ideal now that you damnavisti Unionem Europaeam memoriae? Some Middle-earth elven kingdom? Narnia? Alderaan?